


Scars

by Renee_Lytle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel/Dean Winchester in Purgatory, Comfort/Angst, Destiel - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Post-Purgatory (Supernatural), Purgatory, Purgatory Sex, Scarred Dean Winchester, Scarring, Scars, Self Harm, again its a vague ending so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23522473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renee_Lytle/pseuds/Renee_Lytle
Summary: Dean examines all of his scars late one night while the bunker sleeps. Some of them hold good memories, most of them don't.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 52





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> [Insert standard disclaimer for all my fan fic which is that I don't heavily edit them so I apologize for spelling and/or grammar errors]
> 
> *so I tagged major character death but it's a vague ending that you could read either way so if you're not into major character deaths this MIGHT still be ok*
> 
> For this particular story I went with scars because I've always wondered what the boys would look like in real life even with a cure-all angel on their team. Cas wasn't always there to heal them and in their line of works I'm sure they'd get their fair share of scars. I'm sure this is not a new concept.

Dean barely recognized himself. His body was twisted and wrecked, unrecognizable even from just a few years ago. Hell, even a year ago Dean’s knuckles weren’t so scared up he couldn’t flex his hand without feeling the knots between the bones. His bathroom mirror needed to be cleaned, it was smudged with toothpaste and flimy water but it reflected his new self perfectly well.

His face was surprisingly intact although if Bobby or Charlie saw him they might do a double take. There were small lines of white criss crossing his throat; rivers of muddy pinks, and whites, and browns. His left nostril never grew back quite right after being flayed open by a werewolf’s claw and his right eye didn’t open a hundred percent of the way anymore, but besides that there was only one other visible scar above his neckline. The piece de resistance. A puckered canyon that ran from his left ear all the way to the corner of his mouth. Cas always said it was a miracle the hell hound didn’t rip off his beautifully bowed lips.

Dean couldn’t help but smirk as he ran a thumb over the peaks in his upper lip. “Those lips and lashes of yours,” Cas said once, “they keep your face frustratingly dainty.” He’d been pissed at the time because Cas said it in front of Sam and Rowena but later, when they were lying in bed, Cas kissed his eyelids and lips so softly it made his ache. Even with the tenderness the angel’s hands were never afraid to grip and scratch his scarred skin when rough is what Dean craved.

Leaving the bathroom with a freshly washed face Dean padded back to his empty room and tried to psych himself up for getting undressed. Every year it got harder and harder to move in certain ways, one of them being lifting his arms over his head to take shirts off. His largest scar, a mass of gnarled white webbing that branched out from a disc of smooth hard skin, sat just beneath his right shoulder blade. It made it hard to lift that arm above his head without the feeling of skin unzipping. He had to bend over at the waist as much as he could, without falling over, to shimmy out of the shirt, which was also hard because there was a newer scar on his lower back that pinched when he did.

They never seemed to hurt in the moment, with claws and bullets and god only knows what else coming at you, the adrenaline took care of the pain, but afterward… Dean shuddered and finally slipped the shirt off. He fell with a whump onto the bed behind him. If Cas was with them on the case he would just heal them, but there was always times when they were away from each other for too long, like if guilt-ridden idiots were doing stints in purgatory or something, and angel mojo didn’t heal scars.

Dean rubbed the divot in his upper thigh through his jeans and winced when phantom pain shot through his groin. He was sure a scar couldn’t hurt after this much time had passed but every once in a while he get a flash of pain. His second biggest scar, from purgatory, which he got right before meeting Benny. A Leviathan had sliced a good chunk out of him, exposing the shiny muscle underneath. A few days later, when Benny saved him, he felt fine, but a few days after that and the vampire noticed Dean was lagging behind. When they opened the flap in his pants they saw a severely infected wound. So, with Dean biting down on a piece of tree bark, Benny cut away as much bad skin as he could before sewing everything shut using thread from their clothes and a needle made from a plant thorn. The parts that couldn’t be closed were wrapped in large fronds and secured as tightly as possible with stips of Dean’s flannel. He honestly didn’t know how that wound hadn’t killed him. He was delirious with a fever for days after the patch job and at time they had to sit for hours on end, Benny keeping watch, while Dean hallucinated Cas, mumbling his name over and over.

After a few months it finally started scarring over, having spent countless hours dressing and redressing it, peeling leaves and bark off sticky skin. The skin remained bright red for a long time and his inner thigh muscle dipped sharply inward. Like he needed more bow to his legs, which is what Benny said before taking the last dressing off. It had made Dean laugh so when Benny did what he did next he was at ease despite the surprise of it. Many times during the redressings, a few weeks after the initial wound of course, Dean became hard while Beny worked on him. For a vampire in purgatory his finger oddly gently and soft. By the end of each session all he’d wanted was for Benny to put his hands on him. He got his wish when Benny took the last dressing off, after making his joke about Dean’s legs, when his fingers probed the almost fully-healed wound and then continued to caress up his thigh until they hovered over his crotch. Benny hesitated there and looked Dean in the eyes, asking a silent question. Dean remembered being scared of his own arousal but sure he wanted the handsome vampire to do something about it. The pain in his thigh was nothing to the feel of Benny’s hands and mouth around him. But even in those moments his mind wouldn’t let go of Cas.

Dean stood again, not very easily, and undid his belt, dropping his pants to the floor and stepping out of them. At least that part was easy. He sat and looked down at that chunk of leg missing and marveled at how he was still alive, how Cas and him were able to reconcile afterward. When they found Cas and he confessed to fleeing Dean had been utterly hollowed out. In order to feel something, anything, again he turned to anger and the anger bloomed grotesquely into resentment. The reason he could no longer run as fast or move as swiftly, the reason he almost died, had willingly abandoned him. When Cas saw the scar for the first time, while Dean attempted to wash the tattered remains of his clothes, he was overcome with shame and tears poured from his eyes. An angel sobbing was unheard of, but Cas stood there in front of him with his face twisted up painfully and tears cascading down his cheeks and it only enraged Dean more. Dean didn’t speak to him for weeks after spitting all the nastiest things he could think of at the weeping angel. Most nights, when Cas kept watch close by, him and Benny would fuck, neither of them trying to stay quiet.

Even now those memories made Dean’s gut get so cold it burned. It was guilt and regret that rotted inside him and if he thought about it too long he’d start to spin out. The angel did what he thought was the best thing to keep Dean safe and when the angel saw that he was wrong Dean took that raw, quivering vulnerability and cut it to pieces; intentionally doing as much damage as he could. Of course Cas didn’t come back with them then they found the portal. Why would he? All the angel knew of being vulnerable in front of Dean was being punished for it. 

“Being in purgatory was easier than being around you,” he told Dean after miraculously turning back up. Some months later Cas told Dean it wasn’t true anymore, that he couldn’t imagine being without his closest friend. That time, when tears fell from Cas’ eyes, Dean held him and told him he was right there and always would be.

Dean stretched out his legs and started counting the scars in front of him. He stopped after a dozen. Too many times he’d been without Cas to heal him. Too often they were too far apart. His body was ravaged with thick, uneven tissue because of it and his soul was something even demons shied away from, not able to distinguish one piece of it from another, so knotted and ufsed together it must’ve been. Cas didn’t look away though. He rebuilt it back when he pulled Dean from hell and he knew what the true shape of it was under the scar tissue.

He lay down onto the bed and with a groan swung his legs up. He flexed his toes and noted that he still felt the pinky on his left foot even though it was gone. Dean sat up and looked at the foot and then once more at the map that was his skin. It reminded him of those bumpy topographic maps they used to play with in school, the mountain ranges rising like messy Braille to meet their fingers. His forearms and hands were the worst. His left palm was even etched with scars to the point where he couldn’t lay his hand out flat without a lot of discomfort. Why they always cut their palms he never bothered to question in the moment. Guess it was easier to squeeze blood into cauldrons that way. Man, if he had a penny for every time he’d bled over a cast iron pot or an open grave…

Dean huffed and found the Mark of Cain lightly outlined among a nest of more prominent scars. If anyone saw all these twisting veins of white they’d probably assume he self-harmed, which wasn’t very far from the truth. Most of the scars on his forearms were self-inflicted in the name of provins his humanity or giving up blood for a spell. Some, like the one that ran down the back of his right hand and ended in what would have been two missing fingers, were from pure stupidity. Luckily they’d gotten out of that goblin quickly, cutting into the stomach of the asty fucker that had bit them off, and hightailed it to the nearest hospital to get them reattached. Cas had been called but at that point he didn’t have a working set of wings and had to drive. Some of the scaring did go away and he ended up getting full control of his fingers back when the angel finally showed up to work his magic. Thank god for that at least. He wouldn't have cared so much as far as monster hunting went, if he could still pull a trigger or grip a knife he was fine, but being able to have all his fingers working when he fucked Cas was something he’d never take for granted.

The air in the bunker was still but it wasn’t stuffy. Dean held his breath and listened for a while but it was dead quiet which meant Sam was already asleep. EIther that or he was in bed reading all the news articles he could get his hands on. It was a good thing the kid was good at hacking into things or half of their fake credit card debt would be online subscriptions to newspapers.

He sighed and rubbed at the stubble on his chin. Anything to drown out the silence. How had they gotten here? How had he ever convinced Sam to leave his life in college to do this shit? If anyone had more scars than Dean it was Sammy. Most of them weren’t visible, which was saying something because his overly stretched body was riddled with the ones you  _ could _ see. Plus Sam was actually missing two fingers on his left hand for cryin out loud. Another stroke of luck that it hadn't been his right considering it was his trigger and middle fingers. Dean would never get tired of making hang loose jokes whenever Sam started talking with his hands. Too bad he hadn’t lost the ring finger as well.

Utter stillness hung in the air. A small shiver went up Dean’s spin. He detested the silence. Slipping under the covers he reached for his headphones but not before checking the bottles on the nightstand to see if any still had beer. No luck. He settled for the old iPod Sam had loaded up with his favorite music. As soon as the first note was struck his nerves settled back down. Hell is For Children. He reflexively reached for his favorite but most faded scar.

Dean didn’t know why the handprint was almost completely gone now when at first it was so raised and knotted pink, like a fresh burn. Maybe as hell faded into the background the handprint did too. Cas used to say it wasn’t really a scar because it was made by angelic grace, which was, at its core, a benevolent energy. But Dean knew that wasn’t entirely true. He’d seen some of the worst things imaginable done with angel mojo.

He placed his hand over it and felt the slightly different texture under his fingertips. On most days he couldn’t see it unless the sun hit it just right and the shiny layer of skin would reflect briefly, like a silver coin at the bottom of a brook, winking as cool water flowed over it. When Cas gripped him there it put him into a kind of trance. Awareness would blue and warm around the edges; loose and floating just out of his reach. 

Cas had done it in the middle of sex once on accident, grabbing Dean’s shouldn’t for stability has he moved hard above him. Dean can only remember the feeling. A non-memory of the euphoric release of pressure as everything he ever felt came rushing to the surface.

Dean touched that place on his shoulder with the tips of his fingers. It was hot but when he wrapped his hand around it, not nearly as big as Cas’ faded print, it was almost clammy.

Sometimes, if he closed his eyes tight, he could think on Cas so intensely that he could swear he materialized in the room. The cross between a half-dream and a hallucination; it paralyzed him with longing and for a few moments he might even feel the pressure of Cas’ arms around him. Every once in a while he’d curl up and bring on the fevered visions just so he could fall asleep. Tonight, with the music blaring in his headphones, he thought of the last time Cas held him and fell, barely, into fitful sleep.

From somewhere deep within his nightmares he felt the warmth pressed against the entire length of him and knew Cas was there--finally there-- before he even fully surfaced. The angel’s hands were cold and Dean gasped when they slipped under the blankets to find the scar on his thigh. He’d push them away, to be officially offended and all, but they felt so good on the hot skin there. Instead he receded into his angel’s arms as much as physically possible, to the sound of Cas chuckling in his ear. Those deep, mirthful notes were almost too much for Dean to handle. Almost. He slipped back into sleep and didn’t dream again until he woke. 


End file.
